The “champions of fighting poverty”

Poor families facing a ‘triple whammy’ of benefit, support and service cuts – The Guardian, 13 Dec 2011

In his 2012 Tory Party conference speech, David Cameron said:

“It’s us, the modern compassionate Conservative party, who are the real champions of fighting poverty in Britain today.”

However, looking at child poverty, last December the Child Poverty Action Group warned poor families are facing a “triple whammy” of benefit, support and service cuts. Indeed the Treasury was forced to admit another 100,000 children would be pushed into poverty as a result of the government’s policies, such as freezing the child element of the working tax credit, and research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts the number of children in poverty would rise by 800,000 by 2020 – despite the government signing up to Labour’s target of ending child poverty by that date.